This is misleading. The ID requirements were there to provide a 'verified' account status similar to Twitter's blue check mark. It wasn't some arbitrary requirement. I bet Twitter requires this as well for the verified status.

Their supposed free speech absolutism was just PR puffery. They absolutely banned political accounts.

Could you post without providing that ID?

To the best of my knowledge, yes.

They shouldn't have had verified status.

Couldn’t they have done both? A verified status for the same reasons Twitter does, and properly handled the information. It should have been a verified account once and complete destruction of the submitted data. It obviously should never have been kept indefinitely and unencrypted.

If they could properly handle the data, they would have.

Agreed, but to the last point, if anyone is trying to make the comparison that Twitter is a free speech platform they are a complete lunatic.